When the sun rises at 9.15am and the first gig of the first day (Soffia Björg) is at 10.30am, it's a fine music festival, but Iceland Airwaves is more; it's a marvel. Dotted about downtown Reykjavik in over 75 venues (dive bars, breweries, a hostel, a cinema, a laundromat, a barbershop, a swimming pool, a sweater shop, record shop, Reykjavik Art Museum, the beautiful church Frikirkjan, the majestic Harpa) Airwaves doesn't so much take over the town as nestle into it.

The ultimate 24 hour stopover in Iceland

David Williams

17 Mar 2016

Airwaves isn't an invasion and this is one of its particular marvels. Made up of 70 per cent home-grown or Iceland-based artists, during the first week of November the musical current that already pulses through this city is turned up to an electrifying 11. (There's a geothermal analogy here, something along the lines of how the genre-spanning Icelandic music scene explodes hot as the Great Geysir, but I'll stop, it's been a long day and I have Úlfur Úlfur to run to). As Reykjavik's The Grapevine points out, "a weekend never goes by without some kind of band being formed in a Reykjavik bar."

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Still, walking around the city during Airwaves you really wouldn't know there is a festival happening. The 9,000 or so ticket holders mingle in with the working town as the eclectic mix of 220 acts play for five days. With the superlative Airwaves app you can suck up every tiny piece of information about Reykjavikurdaetur and Milkywhale and plan your own must-see shows. Here are a few of mine.

Gangly

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In Kex Hostel (once an old biscuit factory) I'm watching the lead singer, Jófríður Ákadóttir's, as her hands make cradling shapes to hold those sounds Gangly makes. Once a secretive supergroup Gangly don't need to fall back on myth-making anymore. The eerie clanging of 'Could You Fuck with Someone Else?' is all the myth they need.

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The homecoming Queen is playing the Eldborg at the Harpa Saturday 5 November, and again on Tuesday 8 November. Those not lucky enough to snag a ticket can see the Bjork Digital exhibition in the same venue, or drive out into into the Þingvellir National Park and, as cliched as it is, blast out Biophilia. Turn up the volume on Cosmology and under the ribboning Northern Lights, freak out. I dare you not to crack: I dare you.

Reykjavikurdaetur and Digable Planets

Homegrown hip hop is huge in Iceland and Reykjavikurdaetur - "The Daughters of Reykjavik" a 16 piece female rap collective - come from a series of open-mic events at Bar 11 and Gaukurinn. This year's Airwaves has the greatest focus on hip hop and grime since its inception (in an aircraft hangar at Reykjavik airport). The appearance of old school influential hip hop trio Digable Planets reinforce this.

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Their twitchy, sweetly menacing 'It's Time to Scream and Shout' might give you an idea of what it's like to live in this land of bright light followed by half a year of darkness. This is classy electronic magic.

The Rest of the World

Among the International acts to see this year are Dizzee Rascal, PJ Harvey, Kronos Quartet, Kate Tempest, Digable Planets, The Sonics, and John Lydon who will perform as part of Airwords at the Harpa.

In a country where you can literally see the cracked earth's crust, where you can watch the ground bubble and catch fire, it's hard not to romanticise Iceland and Iceland Airwaves. The festival must be sick of this. But walking out of the Gangly gig at Kex Hostel, still filled with their perfect breath of a sound, looking up to see snow licked mountains and the mirrored hull of the Harpa concert hall, it's bloody hard not to get on a sublime kick. Perhaps the only antidote to this is hip hop, so I'm lucky that Icelandic hip hop is on fire, too.